Last month, the Biden administration encouraged Americans to take an additional COVID-19 shot as soon as the third week of September. Last week, the FDA rejected boosters for the general public in a 16-3 vote. The vaccines are so effective that they require boosters and so safe that the FDA refuses to approve the booster for most people.
Despite the propaganda of our ruling class, observant Americans have understood for months that the vaccines — like all medical treatments — entail certain risks. In April, both the CDC and FDA recommended that health care providers temporarily stop administering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after discovering a potential connection between the shot and blood clotting in six women, one of whom died. By the following month, the CDC had linked the vaccine to dozens more cases of blood clots. In August, Australian medical officials acknowledged a likely link between the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine and a woman’s death from blood-clotting.
In June, the CDC confirmed 226 cases of heart inflammation in young people, particularly among young men, after receiving the mRNA vaccine. And in July, the FDA warned that the Johnson & Johnson increases one’s risk of developing Guillain-Barré syndrome, a disorder by which the immune system attacks the nervous system.
The most ardent proponents of vaccine mandates protest that these injuries are rare, less dangerous than the effects of the virus, or both. They may well be right. Regardless, they cannot maintain that the vaccines are perfectly “safe and effective.” No vaccine has ever been perfectly safe and effective, and claims to the contrary — particularly regarding the hastily developed inoculations against a virus that did not even exist two years ago — tarnish the credibility of the leaders who demand our trust.
Our ruling class and its propagandists in the establishment press have caricatured conservative objections to our present public health regime as the irritable mental gestures of kooks, conspiracy theorists, and libertarians. According to our rulers, we are selfish “anti-vaxxer” rubes so obsessed with individual autonomy that we would sacrifice common sense and the common good to preserve it, even if it kills us. In reality, the issue has nothing to do with vaccines in general or even vaccine mandates in principle but rather with the people peddling this vaccine in particular. These people have erred, misled, and outright lied to us about virtually every aspect of this virus from the very beginning, which occurred far longer than fifteen days ago. They overstated the dangers posed by the virus, understated the dangers posed by the vaccines, and castigated any ordinary person who dared question their erroneous expertise. Our objections come down not to ideology but prudence: these people have squandered their credibility, and they do not deserve our trust.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.